I woke up... And what - it was a dream.

It is the awe, the anticipation, the wonder, and the joy of the miracle that I experienced in my dream that I should feel toward the Bible. There are many rooms in the Holy Scriptures that we have never entered before. There is still a lot of depth and grandeur to be discovered in it. This consciousness of the sensation of the miraculous is an indispensable element of our responsive obedience.

If obedience means awe, it also means listening. This is the original meaning of the word in both Greek and Latin

As a student, I used to listen to a multi-part humorous program on the radio. In one episode, I remember, the phone rings and the hero stretches out his hand to pick up the phone. "Hello," he says, "hello, hello." The volume of his voice increases: "Who is speaking?" A voice on the other end: "It's you who say." "Ah," he answered, "I thought it was a familiar voice." And he hangs up.

Unfortunately, this is a parable about something that all too often happens to us. We're better at talking than listening. We hear the sound of our own voice, but we do not stop to hear the voice of the interlocutor. So, when reading the Bible, the first requirement is to be silent and listen, to listen with obedience.

When we enter an Orthodox church, painted in the traditional style, and look in the direction of the altar, to the east, we see there, in the apse, the Mother of God with Her hands raised to heaven. This was the custom in the former ancient Biblical times (and today the priests of the Orthodox Church raise their hands in this way) - so we must inwardly tune in when reading the Holy Scriptures with our hands invisibly raised to heaven. Reading the Bible, one should be like the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, for She is supremely the One Who listens. On the day of the Annunciation, She obediently listens to the Archangel and answers: "Let it be unto Me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38). She would not have been able to receive and bear God the Word in her womb if she had not first listened to the Word of God in her heart. After the worship of the newborn Jesus by the shepherds, it is said of Her: "But Mary kept all these words, laying them in Her heart" (Luke 2:19). And when the Most Holy Leo finds Jesus in the temple, it is said once again: "And His mother kept all these words in Her heart" (Luke 2:51). The same need is emphasized in the last words of the Mother of God, which the Holy Scriptures tell us, the words spoken at the wedding in Cana of Galilee: "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it" (John 2:5); She bequeaths this to the servants and to all of us.

In all these cases, the Blessed Virgin Mary is a reflection, a living image of a Biblical Christian. We must become like Her by listening to the Word of God, meditating on it, keeping everything in our hearts, and observing everything that the Lord Jesus Christ tells us. When God speaks, you should listen with obedience.

Understanding the Bible Through the Church

Secondly, as stated in the statement of the Moscow Conference, "we cognize, receive and perceive the Holy Scriptures through the Church and in the Church." Our approach to the Bible should not only be obedient, but also ecclesiastical.

It is the Church that tells us what the Holy Scriptures consist of. This or that book is not part of the Holy Scriptures because there is evidence regarding its authorship and the year of its writing. If it were suddenly proved, for example, that the Fourth Gospel was not actually written by the holy Evangelist John, the most beloved disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, this would not change the fact that we, the Orthodox, recognize the Fourth Gospel as part of Holy Scripture. Why? Because the Gospel of John is accepted by the Church and in the Church.

It is the Church that tells us what the Holy Scriptures are, just as it is the Church that tells us how the Holy Scriptures are to be understood. Meeting an Ethiopian, who was reading the Old Testament in his chariot, the holy Apostle Philip asked him: "Do you understand what you read?" (Acts 8:30-31). We are all in the condition of this Ethiopian. The words of the Holy Scriptures are not always understandable without explanation God speaks directly to the heart of each of us when we read the Bible: the reading of the Holy Scriptures, as St. Tikhon says, is a personal conversation of each of us with Christ. But we also need guidance. And our guide is the Mother Church. We make full use of our own minds with the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit; we make full use of the discoveries of modern Bible scholars, but we always subordinate private opinion, whether our own or the opinion of scholars, to the conciliar centuries-old experience of the Holy Church.

The essence of this Orthodox point of view is reflected in the question to the catechumen, in the rite of receiving him into the bosom of the Church. In Russian practice: "Do you recognize that the Holy Scriptures must be accepted and interpreted in accordance with the faith handed down to us by the Holy Fathers, which our Mother, the Holy Orthodox Church, has always preserved and preserves to this day?"

Reading the Bible should be personal, but we should not feel isolated from each other, as individuals, as solitary Christians. We read as members of the family, the family of the Universal Orthodox Church. When we read the Holy Scriptures, we do not say "I," but "we." We read in fellowship with all the other members of the Body of Christ in all parts of the world and at all times. The criterion for understanding the meaning of Holy Scripture is the reason of the Church. The Bible is a book of the Holy Church.

Where should we begin in order to discover the teaching of the Church? The first step is to find out how the Holy Scriptures are used in worship. How, in particular, are Bible readings chosen for various holidays? We must also turn to the writings of the Holy Fathers of the Church and take into account their interpretation of the Bible. Thus, the reading of Holy Scripture by the Orthodox bears both a liturgical and a patristic character.